常闇 : Tokoyami : Everlasting Darkness
by CallMeButLove
Summary: A glimpse into the mind of Uchiha Sasuke. A sort of follow-up to my other small piece, but both stand alone. I should point out that there are mild spoilers & also a hint at one possible ending for this character. There is implied Sasu/Saku. Please R&R!


常闇

*(Tokoyami = Everlasting Darkness)*

A Naruto Shippuden Fan Fiction

By

_~CallMeButLove~_

Naruto © 岸本斉史 *(Kishimoto Masashi)*

The darkness is kind. It is only in the dark that I don't have to see your eyes. Your pained, watery, disappointed, desperate eyes. I don't have to face them as long as I remain sheltered, safe in the darkness I have surrendered to. I don't have to see her eyes either. The jade lights which threatened to hurl me into stark raving madness every time I was foolish enough to look into them. Her eyes hold a completely different sway over me than yours. I want to plunge head first into the depths of her eyes and lose myself eternally in a love more true and passionate than even I understand. So I look away, I stay in the dark where I'm safest from their siren call. Your eyes are different. To me they hold out such succulent, sweet hope along with the never fading challenge. They beckon me, they seem to possess such warmth that I would never feel the chill of solitude again if I were to pay heed to them. Strange, eh? They are so blue, yet they are never cold when you look at me. You couldn't even make them cold when I told you to your face that I would kill you, nor when I tried to do it. Even now, after all that, those eyes offer forgiveness, redemption, healing, laughter, joy, friendship. I can't accept any of that! I can't. The darkness I turn to keeps your eyes from finding me – except when I sleep. I fight to remain awake as much as possible. No one's welcoming gaze can find me in my gentle darkness. No one.

The dark is quiet. In its abyss I don't have to hear you. I can stay in the sublime silence where your pleas and reasoning, your hypnotic temptations, cannot lure me back with you to that place. I cannot hear the wisdom of our Sensei, his advice to me before I left the village, hollowed out and meaningless in the soundless, inky dark. I cannot hear his profession of fatherly love for me, comparing us to Sarutobi, Sandaime Hokage and my former mentor (he was never my master). The dark is so heavy that words and their meanings seem light. They float away from me on a wind of solitude and the quiet protects what remains of my sanity. If I truly heard the words Sakura said to me, I could never be strong enough to stay away. Her anguished expression of love, her precious face contorted with grief and fear in the moonlight's pearl glow. I know she believes I don't care; I have told her often enough. Attempted to silence her voice in my head by ending her life and still she hopes after me, still she waits. Don't question how I know she is still waiting. I know. In my dark home her voice is muffled – distant and indistinguishable within the pitch black hole that shelters me. I am safe there from that hurt. However, the price I pay is being lost to the gentle salvation that awaits me, were I to listen to any of your voices. The black void and its accompanying escape from the musical effervescent sound of the voices of my friends is all I have left.

The darkness is empty. There is a nothingness in the dark – no one else is here with me. I have nothing left, so nothing can be taken away. No one else can be torn from me, ripped from my world, taking my broken heart along for the ride. Again. Empty days in darkness, even more barren nights. The emptiness is a strangely blessed curse. The hollow darkness prevents loss, but it makes gains hard to see. The impossibly deep dark that surrounds me occasionally makes me wonder whether I have actually attained anything at all. The revenge I craved all my life became my own, yes. But the cost is this eternal blackness. Sometimes the void seems to echo without a sound; it's so profoundly lacking any substance. It is these times when I loathe the dark and long for light again, but the light of the world you live in will never again be of help to me. I have fallen too far, I am too far down, I have become a fount of darkness itself. The frozen tundra of my heart exudes black despair that pours from my pores and feeds the tokoyami, the everlasting darkness. It is an insatiable beast, and I am its prey. The dark is empty, it will never be filled, never be anything but empty and cold. Empty and hard. There is nothing soft at all near me, though I have at times had allies. The rocky vastness of my darkness, desecrates anything soft, prevents me from finding softness even in repose and bars me from becoming soft myself. The void of this darkness is a cruel warden.

The dark is lonely. There is no one beside me in this gloom. I know there is no one, nothing and never will be again because I threw it all away. Threw you all away with both hands. You know loneliness too, though; you have been so very alone and yet you don't give up. Alone like me. I don't think you even know how to surrender to the darkness, to surrender to anything. Not yet at least. You may never have to learn that lesson, I hope you never will. I, on the other hand, I have learned to accept the bitter, galling taste of surrender even if no one can see me do it. Nobody who cares can see me in my shroud. The darkness I inhabit is far too thick for most people to see through, much less find air to breathe. I have been drowning, suffocating in it for so long that my lungs no longer strain against it. My hands no longer reach out in front of me craving the touch of a fellow person, be they family, a friend, a lover, anyone. Do you still know the sound of my voice? I am beginning to forget the sound of yours. It has been so very long since your voice really reached me that I am not sure I'd recognize it if I ever heard it again. Yours, Sakura's, Kakashi's, my friends' voices reach my ears occasionally, but they haven't been able to reach my heart in so long that I think it has forgotten them. Oppressive, impenetrable dark keeps everyone out. There is nobody here. I am utterly alone.

The darkness is frightening. It is so devastatingly deep, so achingly endless that I am often possessed by the slithering, curling, maddening tendrils of fear. Fear that there will never be light again. The fear of the very thing I have been clinging to all this time, the blind, empty, cold void where I seclude my soul. I told Gaara that I had closed my eyes to all remaining light, so I said. The blank unholy terror that envelopes me in weak moments belies the truth, that I am terrified of this darkness. Terrified at what it represents, terrified at the infinite power it seems to hold over me. I'm terrified that it will swallow me whole and even more afraid that it won't. That I will never get out, just go on as I am never to find respite. I am imprisoned here and even though the cell is one of my own construction, I still long for escape. I ache for freedom and light. But I know the reality is that there will never be light for me ever again. My eyes really are closed, aren't they? Would you still chase after me if you knew how frightened of the dark I have become? Like a child who sleeps with a small light in the room at night. It's pathetic. I never want you to see this side of me, so I'm grateful even to my captor. The dark that haunts me screens my weakness too. No one knows how much the thought of dying alone in the dark scares me. You said we'd die together; I will believe in you and wait.

The dark is hell. The very thing I tell myself I want, where I tell others my ambition lies, where my only goal can be found, where the scattered fragments of my future lie strewn about the floor beneath my feet along with the shredded tatters of my heart. My life's blood pools there too, but I can't see it. I can't see anything in this blackness. I think if I could see what I have truly become I would go mad. I have become a soulless creature of the darkness, I know this but I don't see it. The empty space where my soul once lived, where my heart was, where I found cause to smile even inwardly, where you once dwelt with Sakura and the others has not stayed empty. No, after I cast all of you out something new and blistering has come to take your places. I have become filled with scalding fury, with rage so searing it boils my blood in my veins, and burns away my sanity. I have never liked the heat and now I am being slowly consumed from within by the flames of my own personal inferno. The dark pit of my existence is melting me away. I have heard it said that heat like this, agony like this will forge a strength above steel in the one who survives it. I'm not made of steel; the animal that is left alive is not a stronger me. I am stronger but I am no longer myself, that Sasuke was burnt to ashes long ago. Can you save what's left of me? Can anyone? I doubt it.

The darkness is all I know now, it's all I understand. Blackness is all I have left. There is one choice left to me and that's how to end this. I made sure long ago that you could never reach this place. This inky, barren, horrific, torturous place where I abide. I made infallibly certain. I did so to protect you from the path I would tread. That's also why I refused to take Sakura with me when she asked me to. Her offer wasn't lost to me, but I resisted to protect her – and you. My final act as your teammate, as your friend was to seal this place and my broken, twisted, mangled, and deformed soul beyond your grasp. It will burn you to the bone if you touch it, therefore you will not reach me. You will not save me. I will protect you from _me_ until I die, beside you or not. I won't give up, either; that's my last remaining choice. Your dreams will become reality, but only so long as I stay strong enough to keep you from offering them up on the altar of my sins. **I will save you from me!** Itachi made his sacrifice for me, his brother, and I will make my sacrifice for you. You, who will never know the reason, who have become my brother. I'll choose to die by your hands so that you and Sakura and my remaining 'family' will live. I'll accept your disappointment and your anger. I'll smile as death takes me, as he did, when I finally see you again for the last time in the light.

おわり

(Owari)

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><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

**I decided to post this even though I'm not sure that anyone liked my other submission. I just feel the need to get this out of my system. So if no one likes it, that's OK. At least it won't be bouncing around my head anymore.**

**This one is kind of a follow up to the other piece, although they each stand alone and this one is much better in my opinion. Please tell me yours, if you have one, in a review...**

**As you can tell if you've gotten this far, this is my little foray into the recesses of Uchiha Sasuke's subconscious. I am hoping for a redemptive ending for him, but I realize that he is probably not nearly as noble as I made him out to be. Wishful thinking, ne?**

**THANK YOU FOR READING! I HOPE YOU LIKED IT!**


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